Walter Abish – Wikipedia

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Walter Abish (Born December 24, 1931 in Vienna, Austria, † May 28, 2022 in New York City, New York, United States) was an American writer. He is considered one of the most important representatives of American postmodernism.

The cornerstones of his novels are foreign countries and their cultures. He himself never visited Mexico and Germany before the books were completed. A topographical-realistic representation can never be his goal. Rather, it seemed to be about taking their reality -constituent power to the language. Fascinated by the strangeness of the places, readers are also influenced by these feelings and thus tied up. Both the fascination of foreign topographies and the construct character of the texts can be explained biographically.

As a child of a Jewish merchant family in Vienna, Walter Abish left his homeland to the German Reich in 1938 after the “connection” of Austria. The family emigrated to Shanghai via Italy and Nice in 1940, which was possible without a visa at the time. Walter Abish moved to Israel in 1949 and also did military service there. He went to England in 1956 and became sedentary in the United States in 1957, whose citizenship he achieved in 1960. Abish taught, among others, at Columbia University, Brown University and Yale University.

A degree in architecture in Israel may explain why his Houses of Fiction (Henry James) Mend to be designed on the drawing board. For the novel How German is it – how German is it was honored with the Pen/Faulkner Award. In 1987 he was Macarthur Fellow. In 1998 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Abish was married to the photographer and concept artist Cecile Abish, with whom he 99, the New Meaning published. The cover of it is also How German Is It . Abish died at the age of 90 at the age of 90 in the New York district of Manhattan. [first]

  • Duel Site , Tibor de Nagy Editions, New York, 1970. Poems, 28 pages, in 300 copies.
  • Alphabetical Africa , New Directions, New York, 1974
    • Alphabetical Africa = Alphabesches Africa , translated by Jürg Laederach, Urs Engeler Verlag, Basel, 2002
  • Minds Meet , New Directions, New York, 1975
    • This is not an accident. Stories 1971–1975 , Hohenheim-Edition Maschke, Cologne 1982. Repr. As: This is no coincidence , Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1987
  • In the Future Perfect , New Directions, New York, 1977
    • Nothing across the big one , Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1983
  • How German is it, how German is it , New Directions, New York, 1980
      • In the English Garden , Fiction International , No. 4/5, 1975, pp. 35–49
      • The Idea of Switzerland , Partisan Review , Jg. 47, 1980, pp. 57–81. (Preliminary work)
    • How German is it , Hohenheim-Edition Maschke, Cologne 1982
  • 99, The New Meaning , Burning Deck Press, Providence, Rhode Island, 1990
  • Eclipse Fever , Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993
    • Sun fever , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1994
  • Double Vision. A Self Portrait , Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2004. Memories.

Essays [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

  • Self-Portrait . In: Individuals: Post-Movement Art in America , Alan Sondheim (ed.), Dutton, New York, 1977.
  • The Writer-To-Be: An Impression of Living . In: Sub-Stance , No. 27, 1980

Interviews [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

  • Jerome Klinkowitz, The Life of Fiction , University of Illinois Press, 1977, S. 59–71.
  • How German is it , Semiotext(e) , No. 4, 1982
  • Alain Arias-Masson: The Puzzle of Walter Abish: In the Future Perfect , Sub-Stance , No. 27, 1980.
  • Richard Martin: Walter Abish’s excessive fictions . In: The contemporary American novel , Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.), Wilhelm Fink, Munich, 1988, Vol. 3, pp. 7–21.
  • J.C. Schöpp: Outbreaks from the mimesis: The American novel in the sign of postmodernity . Munich 1990.
  • Leonard Orr: Walter Abish , in: Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists , Joel Schatzky u. Michael Taub, EDS, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1997, P, 1–7 (with very good bibliography, English).
  • Robert Leucht: 99 species to invent the ego and the world. Walter Abish: materials and analyzes . Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-938803-05-9.
  1. ↑ Alan Cowell: Walter Abish, Daring Writer Who Pondered Germany, Dies at 90. In: The New York Times. 31. May 2022, accessed on June 1, 2022 (English).